AI has become part of everyday work in maritime. 63% of professionals now use it daily, yet only 8% describe their organisation as mature and governed in its use of AI. More than half spend at least an hour a week checking or correcting what it produces. That hidden cost has a name: the verification tax.
Based on a survey of 60 maritime professionals and in-depth interviews with operators, technology specialists and researchers, this report from Thetius and Marcura looks at how the industry is moving from experimenting with AI to building it into commercial and operational workflows, from charter party review to procurement. It asks which kinds of checking protect the business and which only slow it down, and what it takes to use AI with confidence.
It addresses several key questions, including:
- Where is AI already part of daily maritime work, and why is adoption moving faster than the governance, data foundations and training needed to support it?
- What is the verification tax, and how can organisations tell warranted verification, where the stakes justify close review, from residual verification caused by uncertainty and low trust?
- As AI moves from assistant to agent, and from recommending actions to taking them, where should accountability sit when AI shapes a commercial decision?
- What should operators do in practice, including starting with the workflow, measuring the whole human-AI process, matching oversight to risk, and dealing with shadow AI?
72% of respondents say their organisation is using, piloting or planning AI agents, but only 15% say their governance is ready for AI that acts rather than advises. Maritime has stopped asking whether AI is useful. The question now is how to keep its productivity gains while building the trust, ownership and governance to rely on it. This report sets out how.
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